"The theory to which I refer is of course that of perspective, to which M.H Pirenne’s Optics, Painting and Photography provides an authoritative guide. It is based on the fact that light is normally propagated along straight lines and that we can therefore work out for any object in space what light rays from its surface will reach a given point. This is the optical theory of the visual cone or visual pyramid which became relevant to pictorial representation in the Italian Renaissance when such a representation was first defined as a cross-section through a visual cone…no doubt that it was the ancient Greeks who first assigned to the artist this role of an imaginary eye-witness, and it is equally clear that Euclidean geometry would have provided them with the tools for working out the implication of this demand-to what extend this was actually done is,however, still a matter of debate."
PERSPECTIVE: GEOMETRICAL PROOF AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PUZZLE, E.H Gombrich, The Image and the Eye
Durer or Duerer, Albrecht (1471-1528) (after)
Instrument of Mathematical Precision for Designing Objects in Perspective, illustration from 'Science and Literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance', written and engraved by Paul Lacroix, 1878 (engraving) (b/w photo)
The visual cone. From B. Taylor, New principles of Linear perspective (London, 1715)
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